1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus that performs recording on a recording medium, and more particularly, to a recording apparatus having an advance feed mode in which a recording medium of a next page is transported from a setting position to a predetermined position without waiting for completion of recording on a preceding page.
2. Related Art
In recording apparatuses represented by printers, in order to improve throughput thereof, a control operation (so-called advance feed) for starting feed of a next page in advance without waiting for completion of recording on a preceding page, as described in JP-A-2001-278472, JP-A-2002-145469, and JP-A-2005-22792, has been performed.
Recently, in view of convenience of a user's paper sheet setting operation, an increase of the capacity of a cassette in which paper sheets are set has been strongly demanded. However, in a high-capacity paper cassette, lengths of paper feeding paths for a case where paper sheets of a maximum number are set and for a case where paper sheets of a minimum number are set are markedly different from each other. Accordingly, between a case where paper sheets of the maximum number are set and a case where paper sheets of the minimum number are set, a difference of distances (hereinafter, referred to as inter-media distances) between the rear end of the preceding page and the front end of the next page becomes large. In particular, in a case where paper sheets of the minimum number are set, the inter-media distance becomes long, and thereby improvement of the throughput is impeded. In addition, there is a possibility that a feed control operation for the next page is impeded in accordance with non-uniformity of the inter-media distances.
In addition, in serial printers in which recording is performed by alternately performing a main scanning operation and a sub scanning operation, differently from page printers using photosensitive drums as those disclosed in JP-A-2001-278472, JP-A-2002-145469, and JP-A-2005-22792, times required for processing a preceding page may easily be non-uniform. Accordingly, it becomes easy to generate non-uniformity in the inter-media distances. The above-described problems and measures thereof are not described nor implied in JP-A-2001-278472, JP-A-2002-145469, and JP-A-2005-22792.
In addition, in order to prevent a decrease of throughput which is accompanied by an increase of the inter-media distance, a method of setting the paper transporting speed for feeding the next page in advance to a maximum speed all the time regardless of the number of set paper sheets may be considered to be used. However, in such a case, the operation sound of a driving system becomes loud all the time, and there is a possibility that durability of the driving system and rollers for feeding the paper sheet is deteriorated.